


Aftermath

by beknighted



Series: Pages in the Wind: Orlo/Reader [3]
Category: The Great (2020)
Genre: Aftermath of Torture, Catherine (The Great) - Freeform, Count Orlo x Reader - Freeform, Dark Comedy, F/M, Fluff and Angst, Hurt/Comfort, Orlo x Fem Reader, Orlo x Reader - Freeform, Some Swearing, Somewhat domestic idk, Spoilers, The Great TV Show, hulu's the great, my ulterior motive is that I'm literally just writing these to shower Orlo in hugs, the great
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-06-05
Updated: 2020-06-05
Packaged: 2021-03-03 19:20:13
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,392
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24560692
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/beknighted/pseuds/beknighted
Summary: To your lasting surprise, torture wasn’t the worst part—the worst part was seeing Orlo afterwards, watching the storm of emotions pass over his face as he fought to regain his calm.(The reader and Orlo comfort each other after enduring another mad, painful day at Peter's court. SPOILERS FOR EPISODE 9.)
Relationships: Orlo/Reader
Series: Pages in the Wind: Orlo/Reader [3]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1771351
Comments: 4
Kudos: 35





	Aftermath

**Author's Note:**

> Spoilers for Episode 9: Love Hurts! You have been warned. Also, trigger warning - mentions of torture/physical harm but it's not described in really explicit detail.

To your lasting surprise, torture wasn’t the worst part—the worst part was seeing Orlo afterwards, watching the storm of emotions pass over his face as he fought to regain his calm. 

He had been more or less overseeing it all day. Calling the names. As you knew he must, he arrived at yours, at your allotted time (all of these proceedings having a bizarre, almost hilarious, surrealism to them, meticulous as clockwork and wrapped in a bow of bloody linen and cowed spirits). You sat with the other unwed ladies, and their maidservants, who were attending to those who had already been interrogated as they waited their turn. Dazed, you worried that Orlo’s voice might shake, that some tremor might betray sympathy or affection unlooked for, but when it was time, your name was said flatly, and you walked to your fate with your head held high. 

You allowed events to flow over you like a tide, refusing to look at or think of Orlo, or look at or think of Catherine and the coup, a word that you forbade entrance to your mind. You’d never considered yourself especially brave, but as people crumpled from having bricks smashed on their heads (like puppets whose strings had been cut), you realized that you were not only brave—you were furious. If you hadn’t already been convicted, the sight of pale faces and eyelashes clumped with blood, and smothered tears, even among these mad bastards that you’d never really cared for, would have fanned the sparks of your revolutionary inklings into a fucking bonfire. Yes, it was true that you had, on occasion, imagined dropping bricks on the especially vitriolic members of the court. But to _hear_ the sound of a limp body falling? The creak and crack of fragile little people? 

Later, you could not recall exactly what happened or what was done to you. 

You denied everything and screamed, as one did when one wanted to live. Your mind was red with pain and rage, and you were in all likelihood knocked unconscious by a particularly sadistic cunt with a cudgel, but you remembered seeing Catherine wisely position herself among you to share your pain, marshaling favor with the tortured court. 

At some point, it was over. You were led back to your seat, like a member of the audience of a particularly enthralling play. Someone handed you a stiff drink. 

You wondered, in a haze, if Orlo would buckle under questioning. He was stronger than he thought, you knew. But the thought of him alone, in pain, and in crippling doubt at his own capacity to keep his mouth shut—to hell with Catherine and her fucking coup. You’d kill Peter yourself. 

When you found each other, the day was already ebbing, the thousands of candles lit and glimmering on brass, the wounds hastily patched. The acerbic surrealness of it all had not yet subsided, and perhaps never would. In fact, the whole day you’d just wanted to laugh. Ladies with eel-marks on their faces! Men having hot pokers rammed up their asses! What was this? Some inner circle of hell? No, it was the court of the Emperor of Russia, but the damned could be forgiven for confusing the two. 

As ever, Orlo had been bound to his duties, and you to a valiant show of camaraderie with the other ladies, whose support for Catherine you had been sowing for weeks. The effort had finally borne fruit: all they could think of was Catherine’s toast at dinner, and their torrent of exchanged words from earlier had now become a quiet, intent evaluation of how well the Empress had carried herself, how well-spoken she was. How fine a figure she’d made, being tortured with the rest of us apparently worthless, untrustworthy rabble! 

Their pride was as stung as their skin, but now they had someone else to be proud of. 

Presently, Orlo stood at the end of the west hall, where the sun had long since set, both of you finally escaped from the stench of stale sweat and blood, and fine food. An irony rotten and fragrant, a juxtaposition, like everything here. Disheveled, you and Orlo approached each other like sleepwalkers. When you reached him at last, you seized his arm, as much for support as for his comfort, and wordlessly, silently measured each other’s pain. He was visibly unmarked, except for the red welt beside his eye. 

“Did they touch you?”

He shook his head, his eyes overbright. “The whole business was ended right as they were about to—well, I confess I fainted. On the spot.” Orlo’s hand flitted up to your face, hovering without touching. “Fucking bastards.” 

You hadn’t had a chance to look at yourself in a mirror all day. “How bad is it?” 

“It looks really painful,” Orlo said, his features drawn taut, as though the hurt was his own. “And that’s just the bandages. But, rest assured,” he added softly, “your beauty is undiminished. The dried blood gives you a valiant look. Dare I say—saintly.” 

“You heretic,” you laughed, and it was a bizarre sound in this gaudy nightmare of a day, but as always, laughter was all that was left to you. Before you knew it, the two of you were clutching each other, wheezing with near-delirious giggles, and it was only ended when you wrapped your arms around his neck and held him against you. You were only a few steps away from the rest of the court, much of which was still eating and commiserating, but you didn’t give a shit. Nothing mattered much, anymore. 

You felt the end coming closer, with unrelenting certainty. 

“I’m sorry,” Orlo whispered, holding you as tightly as he ever had, the buttons of his frock coat pressing against your collarbone. “I was afraid I'd leap from my seat and rush to your defense, but I didn't, and somehow that's worse. To have stood by and seen you beaten."

“And whipped, don’t forget.” 

“What about your fingers?” 

“My fingernails are, mercifully, still attached.” 

“Oh, lovely,” Orlo said, and again, you were overcome by the unhinged urge to laugh. But this time you didn’t. He hadn’t yet let go, and neither did you, stroking the nape of his neck. You knew that he was putting on a brave face for you, but when you’d looked at him from across the table at dinner, and at the end of the hall, his was the face of a man who had been plunged into a bleak despair, and saw no outlet. 

“Let’s go home,” you murmured—as if there was such a thing in this madhouse, where keyholes could be listened at and doors kicked down. “Let’s shut it all out. Read something. Go to sleep.”

Your frequent stays in Orlo’s rooms had become a comfortable familiarity for both of you, a kind of consolation after the longest of days, after coup meetings that stretched into the night—hours of breathless listening, compelling oration, cold hands, candlelight, pacing footsteps, worry and delight. And together you’d walk afterwards, watching corners and doorways, holding each other’s hands and, when you did arrive, keeping each other up much later than you should have. The shadows under your eyes were now as much the secret marks of hope, and pleasure, as they were the shadows of your sleepless anxieties. 

Tonight, all seemed still, and stifling. Like withheld breath. 

As though afraid at being prised apart, you clasped each other, hand and arm, all the way to his rooms, where his manservant Leskov had, with seemingly superhuman thoughtfulness, prepared a hot bath (despite his eely battle wounds, and dislocated and relocated jaw). With gentle fingers, the soft hands of people whose work was of the sunless, indoor sort, Orlo swept your hair out of the way and freed you from your dress and corset, and you returned the favor with his rumpled waistcoat. The layers of fabric were peeled back, and discarded. Bare skin shone dully in the firelight, but the tender shyness of earlier days was gone, and this evening, even passion bowed to the incredible weight of exhaustion. He inspected the linen bandages on your back and your shoulders. Your wounds throbbed, but you were silent. 

It wasn’t until you sank into the hot water that the tension in your muscles released somewhat, and you gazed at each other in the steam, seeking some calm. Your head ached from the blow earlier. You tried to order your thoughts. 

“Are you alright?” Orlo said, finally. 

“No. But I think if I was,” you said, “I’d be mad. You?” 

“Part of me wants to be sealed into a warm, dark place and permitted to sleep indefinitely. Part of me wants to lead a cavalry charge.” 

“Can you even ride a horse?” 

“Of course I can ride a horse.” 

“I’ve never seen you do so.” 

“They’re unpredictable,” he said, grimacing. “And prone to biting.” 

You quirked an eyebrow. "Sounds like me. Would this cavalry charge be against Peter?”

“Naturally. In this scenario, after being strategically overwhelmed, he and all his brutish mercenaries are hung upside down from a large tree, and—” 

“Are drawn and quartered?” 

“Oh, god,” said Orlo. “That’s very gruesome. But yes,” he decided, with a sudden wicked grin. “Why not?” 

You splashed him with water, mostly to show you concurred, and he returned the childish gesture with gusto. A small, feverish splashing fight broke out. He was definitely winning, and a damp pool gathered on the floor around the basin. Then you involuntarily winced, and shifted out of the water so that your shredded upper back wouldn’t bleed into it, and grim reality returned, the night air raising goosebumps on your arms. Orlo’s dark eyes flashed with anguish. You needed to distract him, or the two of you would probably lapse into miserable talk for the rest of the night. 

“Orlo,” you said, “do you think it should just—all be done away with?” 

“What? The court?” 

“Emperors. Kings. Serfdom.” 

You’d thought he would launch into an impassioned commentary on notions of liberty in France, and the general complexities of the rise of free speech in western Europe, and probably even Plato’s sublime philosopher kings, but he was silent. The water began to cool. 

“I don’t know,” Orlo said, finally. “I know what I used to think—that the spread of liberal ideals would gradually, inevitably fuel progress in the people’s favor, ceding imperial or monarchical power to their control, for their betterment.” 

“And what do you think now?” 

“That it’s not inevitable. That it needs to be forced, if necessary. No one surrenders power willingly,” he said, absently stroking the lines of your wet palm, where the water had shriveled the ends of your fingers. “Not even good rulers. When they do, by some miracle, exist.” 

“I think Catherine will make a good ruler,” you said. “Perhaps a little indelicate, at first, but a right fucking improvement.”

“Agreed,” said Orlo, and once again you expected him to expound upon the moral strengths of her leadership, but he was silent. Suddenly, his hand closed over yours, and he frowned. “If, when it comes to it, everything falls to pieces—” 

“Orlo.” 

“—if that happens, you have to promise me that you’ll _live,_ duty be damned.” 

You shut your eyes, letting your wet hair drip over them. “And could you promise me the same?” 

He made no response. When you looked up, Orlo’s brave face had faltered. He was not the same man of months before, no longer trodden or complicit, now fired with luminous ideas and hopes for things that were to come, but you saw clearly that he was also tormented by dark visions of all that might happen to you. And the water had grown cold, and he was shivering. You stood, your hair streaming, and offered him your hand. 

Even your finest, silkiest sleeping garments, which you had long since brought from your rooms to his, seemed uncomfortable, so you went without them. With the heat of the bath long gone, your wounds itched and ached, and your head pounded. When you were both dried and lying under the sheets in the silvery light of a crescent moon, listening to the wind whistle through a crack in the window, you pressed yourself against Orlo’s warmth, breathed in the smell of him, and you tried to imagine a wondrous future. Catherine on the throne, furnished with rationality and compassion, and all thought of torture and obscenities and humiliation gone. Orlo and you safe. 

“I love you,” he said hoarsely, in the darkness. “I dread anything happening to you.” 

You brushed his damp hair out of his face, and shifted so that as much of your skin was touching his as you could. Committing him to memory. “We will do what needs to be done. And we will be together, at the end of it.” 

“I don’t want to die. Is that wrong?” 

“No,” you said. “Neither do I. But I don’t think we will.” 

“How can you be so certain?” 

“Nothing is certain.” 

“Except that most people are capricious and callous,” Orlo said, probably smiling, “save for a few noble souls, such as you and I, who are only slightly less capricious and callous.” 

“You discredit yourself, my love. You are a beautiful and admirable man of honor.” 

“As are you. I mean, except a woman. A woman of honor.” 

“And I think _I’ll_ lead the cavalry charge, if you don’t mind.” 

“We can both lead it.” 

“Very well. It’s a deal.” 

It was difficult not to agitate skin, or reopen wounds, just getting comfortable, and so you slept very little. Nevertheless, it was a kind of dim, warm peace. Things would not unfold as either of you hoped, and moments of despair approached that would each feel like years, but you did not know this. You knew only that you had survived another day, and ended it here, with Orlo, with the pleasant weight of his head resting on your chest below your neck, and one hand lightly cupped around your breast . He would wake more than once from fierce dreams, your name muttered or whispered. At your touch he would quiet. 

You held each other like castaways at sea, buffeted by the tossing waves, unmoored, but unmoved.


End file.
